MUSIC

Meditationsでも本当に長い間に渡って愛され続ける驚異の大名盤『Romantic Piano』でお馴染みの Gia Margaret の新作『Singing』がリリース！病によって声を失った経験から2020年リリースの『Mia Gargaret』、前作『Romantic Piano』でアンビエント寄りの作風へ踏み出した彼女が本作では声を取り戻しつつあり、一方で、その静けさと優しさはさらに深まっている。数年間声を出せなかった彼女は、代わりに音で語る方法を磨き、響きの細部と感情の精度を研ぎ澄ませてきた。その感覚は今作にも受け継がれ、ピアノの小さなフレーズや静かなアレンジが驚くほど繊細に響く。楽器、機材、アレンジ、声、ひとつひとつに深い情緒を見出し、信じること。その積み重ねが、音と音のあいだの空気までも音楽として息づかせているよう。透明なピアノの響きと、ささやくような歌声、余白が大きく、全てが控えめでありながら、静けさの中に確かな生命が灯る。Gia Margaret が沈黙の先で見つけた新しい声のかたちが、静かにしかし力強く、聴く者の心に触れてくる。

Across a remarkable run of releases in barely half a decade, London’s Loraine James has established her identity through a blend of refined composition, gritty experimentation, and unpredictable, intricate electronic programming. While titles released under her given name on the esteemed label Hyperdub tend toward IDM-influenced, vocal-heavy collaborations, James reserves her alias, Whatever The Weather, for a more impressionistic, inward gaze. On Whatever The Weather II, rich worlds of layered textures flow seamlessly from hypnotic ambience, to mottled rhythms, to cut-up collages of diaristic field recordings. The result is a uniquely fractured beauty, born from a compelling union of organic and human elements, processed through a variety of digital and analogue methods.

James titled Whatever The Weather pieces based on an innate sense of their “emotional temperature” at the time of recording, but she notes that often, upon revisiting them, they will feel somewhere else entirely on the thermometer; such are the whims of the environment. Compared to the album’s predecessor and its Antarctic imagery, though, Whatever The Weather II is a warmer outing, as signaled by the desert clime of its cover photo which is once again shot by Collin Hughes, and the package designed by Justin Hunt Sloane. Also common to both albums is the mastering work of friend and collaborator Josh Eustis (aka Telefon Tel Aviv), who lends his keen ear to James’ complexities, to craft a strikingly three-dimensional sonic experience.

“1°C” opens the album with James speaking through thick static, idly pining, “Bit chilly, innit… Can’t wait for it to be summer,” as a bed of granular tones and scattered vocal samples emerges. This ineffable mood carries through “3°C”, where high-frequency oscillations flutter across the stereo field, a vigorous, minimal kick rattles through a broken speaker cone, and spacious synth harmonies burst and fade into mist. “20°C”, the longest entry in the collection, daydreams through a din of conversation and minor-key chords, before blossoming into a series of glitchy, staccato percussion patterns. “8°C” rides a sole, wandering keyboard line adorned with minimal counterpoint. In these moments, James effortlessly draws order from a diffusion of ideas, and an air of playful spontaneity creates the common thread.

In discussing this project, James notes that the first Whatever The Weather LP (Ghostly, 2022) was created concurrently with Reflection (Hyperdub, 2021), and that there was some degree of stylistic cross-pollination between her two musical frames of mind. At the time, she shared her feelings on genre with Pitchfork’s Philip Sherburne, noting, “Yeah, I might look different from most people who make IDM, and I’m from a different time period, but I don’t really care about the term being negative or positive. I feel my music is IDM and I do my own spin on it, being inspired by other stuff and fusing it all together.” This go around, she dedicated several months of focused energy to the alias, and to the development of its distinctions: no collaborators, fewer beats, and a process based primarily on instinct and improvisation.

The album’s singular sound arises from James’ favoring of hardware over software, as her battery of synths is modulated, transformed, and reassembled through an array of pedals with few or no overdubs, effectively anchoring each arrangement to its precise moment of creation. The greatest effort in post-production was given to sequencing, on which the artist places the utmost importance; taken as a whole, the suite ebbs and flows with a fitting sense of seasonal flux and naturalistic grace.

The final act of Whatever The Weather II offers some of its most affecting moments, beginning with “9°C”, where the haunting echoes of children on a Tokyo playground break through intermittent bursts of static, steeped in a bath of off-kilter, bubbling tones. Here, James displays one of her many strengths: a fearless approach to sonic collage, elevated by ambitious experimentation and pacing that manages plenty of surprises. Never content to remain in the same sonic space for too long, “15°C” follows with soft pads and glistening countermelodies, abruptly joined by a jarring, cyclical rhythm that mimics a loose part inside a whirring machine. Like much of James’ work, it bears an internal logic that only makes sense in her hands.

Closing track, “12°C”, drifts from bustling human spaces into a concrete groove, weaving melody and texture into a truly unusual, soul-stirring fullness. In its final moments we hear, for the first time, a languid acoustic guitar and gentle, finger-tapped beat over her pitch-shifted voice, a callback that ends the album with wry ambiguity, and a hint of more to be found beyond the horizon. Whatever The Weather II is full of such passages, where formal composition appears like a film in negative, and conventions are upturned with wit, intelligence, and skill.

Loraine James has processed the last two years of turbulence through her art. The North London producer started a monthly show on NTS radio, shared several projects on Bandcamp, and recorded two Hyperdub releases, the Nothing EP and Reflection, the proper LP follow-up to her 2019 breakthrough, For You and I (which landed James, then a teaching assistant by day, the top spot on year-end lists by Quietus and DJ Mag). She also returned to a distinct creative terrain uncharted since her teenage years. In contrast to her club music sensibilities, this mode embraces keyboard improvisations and vocal experimentation, foregoing percussive structure in favor of shaping atmosphere and tone. From this divergent headspace emerged new coordinates and climates, a new outlet: Whatever The Weather. A longtime fan of ambient-adjacent Ghostly International artists such as Telefon Tel Aviv (who she’d ask to master the album), HTRK (whose singer Jonnine Standish features on Nothing), and Lusine (whom she remixed at the start of 2021), James saw the label as the ideal home for this eponymous album of airy, transportive tracks as they began to formulate. The titling on Whatever The Weather works in degrees; simple parameters allowing James to focus on the nuances as a mood-builder. Her suspended universe fluctuates; freezing, thawing, swaying and blooming from track to track. James describes her jam-based approach for the sessions as “free-flowing, stopping when I felt like I was done,” allowing her subconscious to lead. The improvisations have an intrinsic fluidity to them, akin to sudden weather events passing over a single environment — the location feels fixed while the conditions vary. The album opens at “25°C,” a sunshower of soft hums and keys. As the longest piece, it serves to establish stability, the inflection point where any move above or below this temperate breeze breaks the bliss. Given James’ proclivity for organized chaos in her production, this scene is fleeting, naturally. From that utopia, we plummet to the most melancholic read on the meter, “0°C,” its isolated synth line traversing a hailstorm of steely beats and static. Next, the dial jumps for the propulsive standout “17°C.” Like a timelapse of springtime in the city, the single accelerates across a frenzy of frames; car horns, screeching brakes, and crosswalk chatter fill the pauses between rapid jolts of multi-shaped percussion. For portions of the work, James leans neo-classical, rendering pensive vignettes of cascading piano keys and warm delay. “2°C (Intermittent Rain)” ends the A-Side on a short and stormy loop; a resulting sense of reset permeates the B-Side’s opener, “10°C.” The producer mingles intuitively on echoed organ, locking into and abandoning atypical rhythms that suggest her jazz-oriented interests. “4°C” and “30°C” display the range of James’ vocal experiments. The former chops and pitches her voice to a rhythmic, otherworldly effect, the latter reveals James at her most straightforward (she cites Deftones’ Chino Moreno and American Football’s Mike Kinsella as inspirations), singing tenderly and unobstructed for nearly the duration before beats collide in the climax. Whatever The Weather closes at “36°C,” while a sweltering heat by any standards the track eases along comfortably on a chorus of synth waves, acting as an apt bookend for this evocative, sky-tracing collection that started in a similar state. Cyclical, seasonal, and unpredictable, true to its namesake.

As C418, composer and producer Daniel Rosenfeld designs sounds to resonate in both physical and pixelated realms. Best known for his original soundtracks to Minecraft, the single best-selling video game of all time, he's developed a discography of instrumental music over the last decade that traverses electronic pop patterns, neo-classical dreamscapes, and sparse ambient motifs. The latter element has broken from the "8-bit" pigeonholing of game music and earned him accolades that reference artists like Erik Satie (The Guardian) and Brian Eno (VICE). In 2015, after quietly self-releasing Minecraft Volume Alpha and Minecraft Volume Beta, Rosenfeld partnered with Ghostly International to reissue Minecraft Volume Alpha on vinyl and CD. The release garnered attention from proper music critics and the gaming community alike, becoming one of the most sought after records in the Ghostly catalog. Following several restocks of Alpha to fervent fan response, the soundtrack's second installment got its first pressing in 2020. Originally self-released in 2013, the collection features tracks that were "silently" added to Minecraft during its music updates and a few that never officially entered the game. Across Volume Beta, Rosenfeld's unmistakable abilities are on display; he creates a sweeping variety of musical ideas that mirror the limitless universe of Minecraft.

Khotin by Vancouver producer Dylan Khotin-Foote is a reissue of the cassette release that sold out instantly at bandcamp in 2018! The profound ambient sound is a chill-out refinement of the unfathomable depth of the previous work, which is both immersive and sleepy, and has been beautifully incorporated into the lo-fi feel of the artwork while maintaining the vibrancy of the spiritual & naturalistic sound world. This is a masterpiece of beauty that cannot be described in words, with a profound sound world that creates a dreamy fantasy land on a windowsill in broad daylight, only to sink into the border between Hades and reality. A masterpiece of unspeakable beauty. Highly recommended for all music lovers from new age to ambient and Balearic.

Space Afrika, the Manchester/Berlin-based duo of Joshua Tarelle Reid and Joshua Inyang, make raw, intensely detailed, visceral music with shades of ambient, trip-hop, techno, and modern classical, drawing spacious urban dubscapes from the contours of their city. 'Quiet Storm', the duo's highly anticipated follow-up to their 2021 LP on Dais Records, expands on its predecessor’s sound and scale in every direction as a sprawling, collaborative vision shaped with profound patience and intention. The leap, both technical and emotional, outlines the duo’s development — two polymath producers, composers, performers, and visual artists who’ve met expectations with mastery, embedding their own coming-of-age story within a moving suite of cathartic abstraction. Songs allude to spirituality and the human condition, the tension between boldness and softness, ambition and the inner demons that persist. Contributors include Axelle Fanyo, Alto Aria, Deuén, Klein, RXKNephew, Tony Njoku, Kiala Ogawa, and Kelly Moran. "We challenged ourselves and our own notions of identity, around class and diaspora, and how that is represented across musical genres. We wanted to show the characteristics of our project through the people we chose to work with," says Reid. "We've stayed true to ourselves. It's music from the heart. It's music that has a particular rawness to it, but we've articulated that in a more modern classic structure, there’s a much more critical pronunciation of techniques," says Inyang. "It's a collaborative record because there is always strength and love in collaboration. But with that, we were able to focus more strongly on our personal identity." Five years feels immense following the release of 'Honest Labour', which was named Resident Advisor’s album of 2021, among other accolades from the likes of Bandcamp, Mixmag, and The Guardian, and cemented Space Afrika as a world-class live act. "These things take time," says Inyang, explaining that with the increased visibility came a certain weight. "It’s taken us down a winding road with extreme positives and also negatives, a kind of responsibility that we've held as artists from the Northwest, with our work expanding globally." Naturally, 'Quiet Storm' responds to the moment with deep consideration. He continues, "There’s no compromise in how we’ve made this album. The idea started as a celebration of Black artistry. Our collaborations have been very intentional, as we discovered the pillars of the story– our journey, which is mirrored in the film, where two young boys have taken a risk by following a belief in their talents." If 'Honest Labour' defined Space Afrika’s industrial-noir frameworks, 'Quiet Storm' takes the contrast up several levels with striking textures and sophisticated arrangements. The album is every bit a multidisciplinary effort, with the duo welcoming contributions from cellists, violinists, guitarists, drummers, and more, often writing and arranging lines to realize the vision in its totality. "We always think about the presentation of the music, and as we're writing, we're thinking about the stages that it's going to be on," says Inyang. Reid adds, "It's been a big nod to have these international collaborations, but there’s a British eccentricity coming through this record. We’re connecting the threads between these disciplines and genres, whether rap or classical. We took time away to revisit and rethink how these worlds have inspired us. We saw it as a cathartic practice, to unshackle oneself and step into the unknown, and there is no limit to the ways you can articulate a message and the vessels that they come through." Speaking to the multidisciplinary nature of the project is the involvement of celebrated artist Glenn Ligon, whose work deals with Black identity and queerness. A central inspiration at the onset of recording, Ligon offered his work 'Figure #30' (2009) for the LP's cover artwork, and following the completion of recording, he agreed to provide the project’s name – an unprecedented gesture from the pioneering artist. When provided with the final audio, Ligon immediately thought of "Quiet Storm," the 1970s radio format known for smooth, late-night programming with themes of life and love. 'Quiet Storm'’s sequence brings the listener through various scenes, interludes, and arcs, marked by a sense that its movement is fluid and its characters are fleeting. Into-the-mirror monologues grapple with the existential and the immediate: survival, autonomy, purpose. The album opens with the explosive, string-backed "Vanity" featuring 2025 Grammy-winning opera singer Axelle Fanyo. At first fixated on the crevices of a quiet room, "Vanity" unfurls under Fanyo’s expressive soprano, traversing a wide emotional spectrum from sublime contemplation to poignant, heart-piercing pain. "Vanity" was the first song from the sessions released to the public, as the song is the central piece to the album's film accompaniment, 'Opera Omnia', directed by Valentin Noujaim. Throughout the record, words spoken and sung are placed sparingly to powerful effect. Vanessa Bedoret's bright vocals on "Crying never had a voice ~" break through the swell of thunderstorms. Tender affirmations from Danish artist Alto Aria lift up "From The Heart of Knowing", as saxophone and cello interplay with Kelly Moran on piano. Rochester, NY rapper RXKNephew declares his deep state reality on the woozy "Ballad For A 'G'" as strings, breath and static are exhaled, with co-production by South London’s Klein. The voice of "Validation" delves into the notion of owning who they are, as disorienting strums and city sounds surround, in conversation with plucks from Greco-Canadian harpist Any. "MLN" gets to the beauty and catharsis at the core of Quiet Storm. It’s a true band effort, a collective slow march featuring British-Nigerian artist Tony Njoku, with guitar and lead bass by Gabriel Evans, London's PIKE on drums, and Copenhagen's GB (Gustav B) on keys and strings. "Someone come and save me from the devil / I’m left outside," sighs Njoku in his processed falsetto as the snare drum snaps. On "Pretty Gospel," the Paris-based Japanese-Congolese artist Kiala Ogawa sings, "In my arms," guiding the listener into a somnambulant trance. The lullabic warmth is a respite from the weather, and world outside– "Another day to dream." The final movement gives 'Quiet Storm' its culminating release. "If This Is Hell" is assembled in a single take as a stream-of-consciousness from NYC’s Kaiuna Odogba aka Deuén, whose relatable array of spiraling brain activity is matched by jazzy, frenetic percussion. The pressure valve opens, as the phased drums and sharp conversational observational dispatched phrases cut abruptly after the line, "I wonder if that’s what heaven’s like?" We are left suspended in the comfort of the album's closer "Regards." Rainfall meets organ, drone, strings, and keys with gun reloads juxtaposed over tranquil hums. Heavy yet hopeful, Joshua Tarelle Reid and Joshua Inyang remind you of their journey so far. An appropriately cryptic and transportive outro for their open-ended opus, 'Quiet Storm' is a landmark level-up, self-produced, self-funded, and manifested out of sheer drive and conviction. Through bent time and low-lit haze, undoubtedly, Space Afrika has arrived.

Space Afrika, the Manchester/Berlin-based duo of Joshua Tarelle Reid and Joshua Inyang, make raw, intensely detailed, visceral music with shades of ambient, trip-hop, techno, and modern classical, drawing spacious urban dubscapes from the contours of their city. 'Quiet Storm', the duo's highly anticipated follow-up to their 2021 LP on Dais Records, expands on its predecessor’s sound and scale in every direction as a sprawling, collaborative vision shaped with profound patience and intention. The leap, both technical and emotional, outlines the duo’s development — two polymath producers, composers, performers, and visual artists who’ve met expectations with mastery, embedding their own coming-of-age story within a moving suite of cathartic abstraction. Songs allude to spirituality and the human condition, the tension between boldness and softness, ambition and the inner demons that persist. Contributors include Axelle Fanyo, Alto Aria, Deuén, Klein, RXKNephew, Tony Njoku, Kiala Ogawa, and Kelly Moran. "We challenged ourselves and our own notions of identity, around class and diaspora, and how that is represented across musical genres. We wanted to show the characteristics of our project through the people we chose to work with," says Reid. "We've stayed true to ourselves. It's music from the heart. It's music that has a particular rawness to it, but we've articulated that in a more modern classic structure, there’s a much more critical pronunciation of techniques," says Inyang. "It's a collaborative record because there is always strength and love in collaboration. But with that, we were able to focus more strongly on our personal identity." Five years feels immense following the release of 'Honest Labour', which was named Resident Advisor’s album of 2021, among other accolades from the likes of Bandcamp, Mixmag, and The Guardian, and cemented Space Afrika as a world-class live act. "These things take time," says Inyang, explaining that with the increased visibility came a certain weight. "It’s taken us down a winding road with extreme positives and also negatives, a kind of responsibility that we've held as artists from the Northwest, with our work expanding globally." Naturally, 'Quiet Storm' responds to the moment with deep consideration. He continues, "There’s no compromise in how we’ve made this album. The idea started as a celebration of Black artistry. Our collaborations have been very intentional, as we discovered the pillars of the story– our journey, which is mirrored in the film, where two young boys have taken a risk by following a belief in their talents." If 'Honest Labour' defined Space Afrika’s industrial-noir frameworks, 'Quiet Storm' takes the contrast up several levels with striking textures and sophisticated arrangements. The album is every bit a multidisciplinary effort, with the duo welcoming contributions from cellists, violinists, guitarists, drummers, and more, often writing and arranging lines to realize the vision in its totality. "We always think about the presentation of the music, and as we're writing, we're thinking about the stages that it's going to be on," says Inyang. Reid adds, "It's been a big nod to have these international collaborations, but there’s a British eccentricity coming through this record. We’re connecting the threads between these disciplines and genres, whether rap or classical. We took time away to revisit and rethink how these worlds have inspired us. We saw it as a cathartic practice, to unshackle oneself and step into the unknown, and there is no limit to the ways you can articulate a message and the vessels that they come through." Speaking to the multidisciplinary nature of the project is the involvement of celebrated artist Glenn Ligon, whose work deals with Black identity and queerness. A central inspiration at the onset of recording, Ligon offered his work 'Figure #30' (2009) for the LP's cover artwork, and following the completion of recording, he agreed to provide the project’s name – an unprecedented gesture from the pioneering artist. When provided with the final audio, Ligon immediately thought of "Quiet Storm," the 1970s radio format known for smooth, late-night programming with themes of life and love. 'Quiet Storm'’s sequence brings the listener through various scenes, interludes, and arcs, marked by a sense that its movement is fluid and its characters are fleeting. Into-the-mirror monologues grapple with the existential and the immediate: survival, autonomy, purpose. The album opens with the explosive, string-backed "Vanity" featuring 2025 Grammy-winning opera singer Axelle Fanyo. At first fixated on the crevices of a quiet room, "Vanity" unfurls under Fanyo’s expressive soprano, traversing a wide emotional spectrum from sublime contemplation to poignant, heart-piercing pain. "Vanity" was the first song from the sessions released to the public, as the song is the central piece to the album's film accompaniment, 'Opera Omnia', directed by Valentin Noujaim. Throughout the record, words spoken and sung are placed sparingly to powerful effect. Vanessa Bedoret's bright vocals on "Crying never had a voice ~" break through the swell of thunderstorms. Tender affirmations from Danish artist Alto Aria lift up "From The Heart of Knowing", as saxophone and cello interplay with Kelly Moran on piano. Rochester, NY rapper RXKNephew declares his deep state reality on the woozy "Ballad For A 'G'" as strings, breath and static are exhaled, with co-production by South London’s Klein. The voice of "Validation" delves into the notion of owning who they are, as disorienting strums and city sounds surround, in conversation with plucks from Greco-Canadian harpist Any. "MLN" gets to the beauty and catharsis at the core of Quiet Storm. It’s a true band effort, a collective slow march featuring British-Nigerian artist Tony Njoku, with guitar and lead bass by Gabriel Evans, London's PIKE on drums, and Copenhagen's GB (Gustav B) on keys and strings. "Someone come and save me from the devil / I’m left outside," sighs Njoku in his processed falsetto as the snare drum snaps. On "Pretty Gospel," the Paris-based Japanese-Congolese artist Kiala Ogawa sings, "In my arms," guiding the listener into a somnambulant trance. The lullabic warmth is a respite from the weather, and world outside– "Another day to dream." The final movement gives 'Quiet Storm' its culminating release. "If This Is Hell" is assembled in a single take as a stream-of-consciousness from NYC’s Kaiuna Odogba aka Deuén, whose relatable array of spiraling brain activity is matched by jazzy, frenetic percussion. The pressure valve opens, as the phased drums and sharp conversational observational dispatched phrases cut abruptly after the line, "I wonder if that’s what heaven’s like?" We are left suspended in the comfort of the album's closer "Regards." Rainfall meets organ, drone, strings, and keys with gun reloads juxtaposed over tranquil hums. Heavy yet hopeful, Joshua Tarelle Reid and Joshua Inyang remind you of their journey so far. An appropriately cryptic and transportive outro for their open-ended opus, 'Quiet Storm' is a landmark level-up, self-produced, self-funded, and manifested out of sheer drive and conviction. Through bent time and low-lit haze, undoubtedly, Space Afrika has arrived.

His latest work is already here! Inspired by the global anti-racist protests in the wake of George Floyd's murder, the mixtape "hybtwibt?" was released in 2020 as a fundraiser against racism in the UK. Where To Now?" was featured on Pitchfork and Bandcamp as one of the "best ambient albums of the year. Space Afrika (Joshua Inyang & Joshua Tarelle) is an experimental duo based in Manchester, UK, who have been featured on various cutting-edge labels such as Where To Now? Their new album is out now on the prestigious Dais label. Liquefying garage, jungle, grime, and even dream pop into a glittering trail of pulses and pads, they've boiled down the music of Dean Blunt, DJ Spooky, the Cocteau Twins, and Klein into a candlelit narrative.

Minecraft - Volume Alpha is the work of German composer and musician Daniel Rosenfeld. Using C418 as his moniker, Rosenfeld crafted the sweeping soundtrack and vibrant sound design which helped breathe life into Minecraft's voxel-based universe. Fans and critics were universally enamored with his beatless, nuanced electronic pieces upon release. Popular gaming site Kotaku named it among The Best Game Music of 2011, calling the music "remarkably soothing," and The Guardian has compared Rosenfeld's delicate piano and sparse ambient motifs to legendary artists Erik Satie and Brian Eno. In an interview feature with C418, Polygon distilled Volume Alpha to its essence: "It's not bound by the retro aesthetic of Minecraft's graphics. It transcends them. The album is an attempt to uplift the combined game/music experience into the sublime."

TOTAL Allison de Groot is a clawhammer banjo player from Winnipeg, Canada whose work spans old-time, bluegrass, and folk traditions. A recipient of the Steve Martin Prize for Excellence in Banjo and an Americana Music Association Instrumentalist of the Year nominee, she is perhaps best known for her duo with fiddler Tatiana Hargreaves, whose albums Hurricane Clarice and their self-titled debut earned recognition from the IBMA, the Canadian Folk Music Awards, and the JUNOs.Rich Ruth is a Nashville-based multi-instrumentalist (born Michael Ruth) who records for Third Man Records. His solo albums draw from ambient, spiritual jazz, minimalism, and synth-driven post-rock, compositions that begin with looping drones and synthesizers and expand outward through collaboration. He is also a third of Shrunken Elvis, a Nashville trio born from long European drives and winter jam sessions, uniting Ruth with pedal steel guitarist Spencer Cullum and guitarist Sean Thompson in a shared creative space that prizes intuition over ambition. Their well-received self-titled debut arrived in 2025.The two came together when Ruth was set to produce a solo record for de Groot. Over the course of about a year in Ruth's Nashville studio, the project quietly shifted: the two began composing together, and what emerged is shaped as much by space and process as by melody. De Groot's clawhammer banjo moves through looping and delay, set against Ruth's synthesizer arrangements in a way that balances the tactile immediacy of acoustic instruments with the enveloping qualities of electronics. Patrick M'Gonigle contributed violin and string arrangements throughout, while Shrunken Elvis bandmate Spencer Cullum brings his pedal steel to several tracks, adding another layer of atmospheric depth to the record's palette.Shortly after completing the album, the group debuted the material live at Big Ears Festival as one of the event's surprise performances, a stripped, minimalist set that reflected the spirit of the recordings.The album captures two distinct musical voices finding not so much a meeting point as a new, shared language.

1 TOTAL 2 Composer and multi-instrumentalist Koen Holtkamp has spent more than two decades shaping a body of work at the intersection of ambient, experimental, and electroacoustic music. Known for his role in the influential duo Mountains, as well as a solo catalog defined by texture and spatial awareness, Holtkamp has long explored how sound interacts with environment and perception. With Nightlife, he enters a new phase of that inquiry, one shaped as much by physical relocation as artistic evolution.After leaving Brooklyn for the relatively rural setting of New York’s Hudson Valley, Holtkamp found himself immersed in nature and embracing a slower way of life, a shift that directly informed the album’s creation. Rather than rushing into a new project, he allowed the space itself to guide him, focusing on experimentation and play instead of a fixed outcome. Over time, a new instrument emerged from his modular system, built around physical modeling techniques that emulate plucked string sounds. Drawing on a deep affinity for acoustic traditions, from guitar soli to the kora and other chordophones, he began translating those influences into an electronic language, creating music that feels tangible, effusive, and even intimate, despite its synthetic nature.As the pieces took shape, Holtkamp expanded the project into a kind of imagined ensemble. Composed with specific collaborators in mind, the album features extensive contributions from drummer Greg Fox and saxophonist and flutist Matt Bauder, whose performances subtly reshape the material and draw it toward more fluid, song-like forms, alongside a guest appearance from Ben Vida on synth bass. Yet even as Nightlife occasionally resembles a band in motion, its construction resists traditional cohesion. Acoustic and electronic sources coexist to create a hyper-dimensional sense of space, with each element deliberately placed in its own distinct environment, yielding a complex yet inviting setting that feels both otherworldly and completely natural. Much of the album was created during late-night sessions, which became a kind of personal ritual and ultimately inspired its title. Nightlife unfolds as a series of finely detailed environments, where stillness, texture, and subtle interplay take precedence over momentum. Each piece invites close listening while remaining open and unforced, reflecting both a change in pace and a deepening of focus. The result extends Holtkamp’s ongoing interest in how sound can shape, and be shaped by, the spaces we inhabit.

1 TOTAL 2 Composer and multi-instrumentalist Koen Holtkamp has spent more than two decades shaping a body of work at the intersection of ambient, experimental, and electroacoustic music. Known for his role in the influential duo Mountains, as well as a solo catalog defined by texture and spatial awareness, Holtkamp has long explored how sound interacts with environment and perception. With Nightlife, he enters a new phase of that inquiry, one shaped as much by physical relocation as artistic evolution.After leaving Brooklyn for the relatively rural setting of New York’s Hudson Valley, Holtkamp found himself immersed in nature and embracing a slower way of life, a shift that directly informed the album’s creation. Rather than rushing into a new project, he allowed the space itself to guide him, focusing on experimentation and play instead of a fixed outcome. Over time, a new instrument emerged from his modular system, built around physical modeling techniques that emulate plucked string sounds. Drawing on a deep affinity for acoustic traditions, from guitar soli to the kora and other chordophones, he began translating those influences into an electronic language, creating music that feels tangible, effusive, and even intimate, despite its synthetic nature.As the pieces took shape, Holtkamp expanded the project into a kind of imagined ensemble. Composed with specific collaborators in mind, the album features extensive contributions from drummer Greg Fox and saxophonist and flutist Matt Bauder, whose performances subtly reshape the material and draw it toward more fluid, song-like forms, alongside a guest appearance from Ben Vida on synth bass. Yet even as Nightlife occasionally resembles a band in motion, its construction resists traditional cohesion. Acoustic and electronic sources coexist to create a hyper-dimensional sense of space, with each element deliberately placed in its own distinct environment, yielding a complex yet inviting setting that feels both otherworldly and completely natural. Much of the album was created during late-night sessions, which became a kind of personal ritual and ultimately inspired its title. Nightlife unfolds as a series of finely detailed environments, where stillness, texture, and subtle interplay take precedence over momentum. Each piece invites close listening while remaining open and unforced, reflecting both a change in pace and a deepening of focus. The result extends Holtkamp’s ongoing interest in how sound can shape, and be shaped by, the spaces we inhabit.

A new dawn of infinite and eternal grief work. Inheriting the lifeline and tape music traditions of avant-garde heroes such as John Cage, Steve Reich and Brian Eno, sampling everything from easy listening to Musac long before it became fashionable, through slow, melancholic overtones. William Basinski, a legendary NY drone writer who will make a name for himself in ambient history as a pioneer who has predicted screw music and even vaporwave. The latest album from , which was composed by himself using a tape loop from an archived sound source recorded in 1979, is now available from ! Like many previous works, it is a profound meditation music with the theme of "death and corruption", but it is melancholic and lost, with a deeper arc of sadness than any other work since 2002's masterpiece "Disintegration Loops". Deformed screw music like steam of feeling. Of course, fans around The Caretaker ~ Natural Snow Buildings ~ Grouper are also a must-have!

A new dawn of infinite and eternal grief work. Inheriting the lifeline and tape music traditions of avant-garde heroes such as John Cage, Steve Reich and Brian Eno, sampling everything from easy listening to Musac long before it became fashionable, through slow, melancholic overtones. William Basinski, a legendary NY drone writer who will make a name for himself in ambient history as a pioneer who has predicted screw music and even vaporwave. The latest album from , which was composed by himself using a tape loop from an archived sound source recorded in 1979, is now available from ! Like many previous works, it is a profound meditation music with the theme of "death and corruption", but it is melancholic and lost, with a deeper arc of sadness than any other work since 2002's masterpiece "Disintegration Loops". Deformed screw music like steam of feeling. Of course, fans around The Caretaker ~ Natural Snow Buildings ~ Grouper are also a must-have!

アルバムについて Kassel Jaeger (aka François J. Bonnet) returns to Shelter Press after Swamps / Things, Shifted in Dreams, and the recent reissue of the classic Zauberberg, co-composed with Akira Rabelais and Stephan Mathieu. With this major new album, entitled Sub Re, Bonnet continues his long exploration of the musical possibilities of sound, extending the concrete approach developed at the Groupe de Recherches Musicales, the historic and essential Parisian studio that Bonnet has been directing since 2018. Sub re, in Latin, can mean “under the thing, under the substance, under the matter.” It's precisely this direct approach to music, drawing on the extraction of raw sound material, that forms the basis of this album. Under the matter thus signals the concrete aspect of music, but not the concrete that is transfigured, becoming vapor and form, the substrate of an idea. Rather, it signals the concrete beneath the concrete, in the immanence of sounds, in their becoming, as a driving force, like a tide, like a vault of imperious and powerful matter. To achieve this, Bonnet draws on a multitude of sound sources (acoustic, electronic, natural or artificial, created on purpose or found by chance) and a multitude of contexts and occasions to give them form. The movement, a shell, a bell, a spell, for example, was heard for the first time during a concert organized in Venice in connection with Latifa Echakhch's contribution to the Swiss Pavilion at the 2022 Art Biennale, while the last movement on the record, signalmirror, concluded a piece presented at the first Sound Biennale in Sion (Switzerland) in 2023. These elements, formed and detached from their original context of appearance, of the places and people who made them possible and listened to them, contribute to a complex layering of climates and sonic worlds and help create a contrasting album, where density and tenuity coexist in a succession of moving waves, sometimes laden with memories, sometimes filled with regrets, always set in motion by their own morphology. Sub Re also refers to a chapter in Victor Hugo's Toilers of the Sea, a key passage in which the main character, faced with a colossal task, finds himself alone in the middle of the sea, beneath a gigantic shipwreck caught in the jaws of an isolated reef, surrounded by water, currents, and winds, alone to face the impossible. It is indeed beneath the surface that actions arise, decisions are made, and intuition guides us.

From 1970s Hawaii on to modern day New Jersey, Don Slepian has enjoyed a reputation as one of new age’s most respected and technologically-advanced synthesists. Slepian’s 1980 landmark Sea of Bliss is frequently cited as one of new age’s greatest albums, and is one of the genre’s most legendary tape-only recordings. Two side-length Alles synthesizer tracks transport listeners to personal paradises for relaxation, rest, focus and reset.

New album of peaceful explorations by The Cosmic Tones Research Trio. This, their second record, maintains the space and long tones that made their debut, "All Is Sound" a successful anecdote to the loud and fast times we live in. It also expands their musical palate with powerful rhythmic elements.

The Cosmic Tones Research Trio have been breaking new ground with healing / meditation music that also honors their roots in Gospel and Blues...and hints at forward looking Spiritual Jazz. Through their Cello, Saxophone, Piano and Flute playing they bring a new sound to the table. Ancient to the future.

Every artist has to discover their voice. Gia Margaret didn’t find herself until she lost hers. With a vocal injury that kept her from singing for years, she developed other musical languages, mastering the grammar of an intricate, homey form of ambient music pioneered by Ernest Hood and perfected by The Books. Now, her physical voice healed and her artistic voice honed, she comes full circle with Singing, her first vocal album since 2018’s There’s Always Glimmer. Led by soft piano lines that fall like breath on glass, the music on Singing evidences the same jeweler’s sensitivity to detail that she developed in her silence.

“There was a time when I really didn’t know if I would sing again. So once I healed, there was a lot of internal pressure to come back strong,” Margaret says. “I didn’t know who I was anymore. So it felt like beginning again, and reconnecting with these very old, old parts of myself.” This feeling of intermixed alienation and rediscovery is palpable across the album. In opener “Everyone Around Me Dancing,” she watches a party from the wings, aware of how her body keeps her from communal joy while also providing new modes of self-knowledge. Shut out from the scene, she is “closer to the ground, the planet.” In “Alive Inside,” she’s so far away from the source that she’s praying to whoever might hear (“a god, a friend that’s gone, a spirit”). As her voice rises, it seems to be trapped in a web of distortion; it’s as if in her pursuit, she’s pushing at the very boundaries of what can be said.

The process of making Singing was one of learning how to trust each of those feelings. The album was partially recorded in London with Frou Frou’s Guy Sigsworth, who helped Margaret unify the spree of ideas she had for “Good Friend,” an album highlight that includes Gregorian chant by ILĀ and turntable scratches, among many other things. David Bazan and Amy Millan also make appearances, as do Kurt Vile and Sean Carey, while Margaret’s longtime collaborator Doug Saltzman plays on and co-produces much of the record. Deb Talan, previously of The Weepies, lends her voice, piano, and guitar to the album's closing—and definitive—statement, "E-Motion."

Gia Margaret is always singing. Every note of this album sings a warm requiem to her past selves; every layer sings her future self into being. Across the album, she applies the lessons of speechlessness—the quasirational ways we communicate without communicating, the way formless sound can cut to the heart of things like a scalpel—to her own artistic voice.

As Green-House, musicians Olive Ardizoni and Michael Flanagan engage human nature and the natural world through joyous, dynamic synthesis. Overlaying frequencies and expressions like camouflage, their deeply layered collaborative process begins with either artist; Ardizoni is often drawn to melody, Flanagan to harmonics. The power lies in how their ideas helix together, achieving a depth greater than the sum of its parts. For their first LP with new label home, Ghostly International, Green-House grows and refines their vivid instrumental songcraft with uncharted, genre-defying freedom and movement, a more active, percussive, and emotion-filled energy, marked by flowing bodies of sound and sweeping vistas. Hinterlands tunes into the beauty of the world with defiant, radical sincerity.

Since 2020, across a catalog of acclaimed releases via the scene-creating Los Angeles imprint, Leaving Records, the duo has pursued a curiosity in environments, reaching for innate and faraway spaces by way of organic and synthetic instrumentation, high-definition sound design, and “idiosyncratic melodies crafted with the patient and methodical hand of a gardener,” writes Pitchfork. Green-House doesn’t fit neatly into any single category. Ardizoni and Flanagan aren’t aligned with New Age ideologies or spirituality, and the ambient tag feels increasingly limited given all that’s going on in their songs, which skew closer to the realms of IDM or even modern classical on their new album. What remains inherent is an open sense of wonder, “the idea of legitimizing certain emotions within music that often aren’t taken seriously in art, like happiness and joy,” says Ardizoni, whose eclectic personality shines through even without lyrics.

They welcome influences from all over; moments on Hinterlands evoke hypnagogic folk, tropical synth-pop, pan-flute mountain music, jazzy lounge, film scores, library sounds, and other forms of paradise-world-building. The duo simply makes the music they want to hear, earnestly dreaming of idyllic settings, their hope borne of necessity.

Like any artist living in Los Angeles, the 2025 wildfires disrupted any semblance of normalcy in creative life. However, they give careful consideration to how ever-looming environmental and political anxiety may relate to the project. “There's freedom in music, not requiring nuance in order to share an emotion or a fantasy or a utopian ideal with others,” Ardizoni says. “I'm an anarchist and an artist. I don't have to explain that. I can just put the emotion in and hope that it can be used as a tool, to be comforting or inspiring for people.”

As their third LP, Hinterlands is notably fuller, bigger-feeling than past work; brimming with kaleidoscopic guitar lines, bubbling synth textures, and an orchestral radiance that often registers as more than just two people. They bring up biomimicry — learning from and adapting alongside nature — as a formative notion. “When we’re talking about mimicry, it is also like projecting yourself as being larger in a certain way, in a sonic sense, sounding like a full band, but also as people, interconnected with a broader world,” says Flanagan. “This record is us letting go a little bit as well, giving ourselves the freedom to just write and see what happens, to let the music grow naturally.” Ardizoni adds, “We try to utilize what’s right in front of us, just being in an urban environment and making do with what's there in order to continue to foster that connection we have to the natural world.”

Ardizoni and Scott Tenefrancia shot the images that appear within the droplets of the LP’s artwork on a trip to Yosemite and the Inyo National Forest; Flanagan later magnified the scenes through the water with macro photography, using the droplets as a series of lenses. The striking visual serves as a fitting metaphor for music that straddles the organic and the digital — a collection of auditory microcosms developed through imaginative fusion.

It begins in the languid heat of “Sun Dogs”, which nods to the coastal sway of Haruomi Hosono's Pacific album and Paradise View soundtrack with washes of keys, horns, and strings. “Sanibel” is pure shoreline bliss, named after the Florida island a young Ardizoni would visit, growing up on the nearby Cape Coral Island (“my first real experiences as a human exploring nature”). “Farewell, Little Island” borrows its title from the 1987 short animated film directed by Sándor Reisenbüchler, which depicts the drowning of a village by modern technology. The track’s buoyant, spiraling guitar samples, their first time exploring the effect, reminded them of the film’s paper-cut animation and of how the story balances serene splendor with tragedy.

“Dragline Silk” conjures a curious trip. Built on a bed of ascending synth and guitar chords bathed in spring reverb (stemming from their shared love for Jessica Pratt’s latest album) and named after the natural phenomenon of spiders that use static electricity to sail through the atmosphere, the track soars with grandeur. The Hinterland suite is the album’s centerpiece, three tracks traversing wide hilltop terrain, with flute and guitar playfully surveying the scene (“Hinterland I”) before more contemplative strums and astral synth and woodwinds take hold (“Hinterland II” and “III”).

Hinterlands’ sequencing takes the listener from sea to mountains to somewhere more abstract and fantastical; late highlight “Under the Oak” possesses an otherworldly calm on warbled keys, followed by “Bronze Age”, even more subdued. “Valley of Blue” ends the movement in melancholy, overlooking a blue flower field with swells of synthetic strings and oboe in the style of Final Fantasy (Ardizoni originally called it “Memory of a Chocobo”). These traces of sadness permeate the otherwise effervescent collection, reminders that, behind the wonder, lies often profound worry (after all, Sanibel Island was nearly wiped out in 2022). Green-House makes sense of these feelings through their art, with genuine tenderness and refreshing conviction.

Canadian producer Dylan Khotin-Foote has kept his Khotin alias going for the better part of a decade; the impressionistic electronic project shifts with the movements in his life. Sometimes it leads, like when the club-friendly grooves of 2014’s Hello World immersed him in the heart of Vancouver’s underground dance scene, and sometimes it follows, like 2018’s Beautiful You, a downtempo salve for DJ fatigue. His melodic sensibility and playful ear for atmosphere remain the rippling core of the project’s fingerprint; whether beat-driven or ambient, a foggy smear or a dusted and pristine print, a Khotin track has a distinct and instantly recognizable swirl. During and after the 2020 release of Finds You Well, his second LP on Ghostly International, Khotin-Foote settled back into a slower vibe in his hometown of Edmonton. Even before the pandemic, his pivots to softer production, and away from DJing, left him with fewer opportunities in Vancouver and club bookings overall, and as a self-identifying introvert, he was fine with that. But the change of pace did open space for Khotin-Foote to grapple with concepts of adulthood and career. At his lowest, he almost walked off this musical path altogether; instead, he doubled down on the craft — the tone, pacing, and dynamism of new material — arriving at a definitive full-length. With Release Spirit, Khotin releases himself from the pressure of expectation, fusing and refining everything we know about his music. The warmth and familiarity of Khotin’s dreamy, dulcet style meet new ideas and frameworks, a natural progression, a modest revelation; Khotin confirms it is okay to move slowly and he’s never sounded better doing it. The album title borrows from the “release spirit” mechanic in the video game World of Warcraft. When players die, they are prompted to release their spirit and return as ghosts to find their corpses and come back to life. Khotin sees it as a worthy metaphor for the impending change his return home presented and the resulting process of purging artistic expectations to find his creative self again. On this go-around, he is freer, more playful, and more intentional within his palette of warped synth, breakbeats, and piano sounds — including the classic Casio SK-1 presets he’s used since the start — mingling with wistful samples, field recordings, and other abstract snippets. For the first time, he enlisted Nik Kozub to do the mix and assist with sequencing. Khotin-Foote has long worked with the Edmonton-based musician and engineer in the mastering phase, as well as their days co-running the label Normals Welcome, and this time was able to involve his ears earlier given their newfound proximity. “I think it’s my best sounding record to date.” We begin on “HV Road” or Happy Valley Road, where Khotin-Foote spent time during a family vacation in British Columbia’s Okanagan Lake. His plans to record crickets at night are quickly foiled by his younger siblings; the cute exchange orients the listener to a core memory of sorts, setting the tone of universally understood warmth and wonder that has defined some of Khotin’s most transportive tracks. Hazy percussion takes hold, and we are swept further into the wisp of “Lovely,” a grooving, melodic standout built on the interplay between the beat and human voice-like hums. Khotin knows this zone well; equally suited for a reverie or a club warm-up. The bubbling atmosphere and absurdity of “3 pz” offer a cosmic/comic interlude and also speak to reflections on his family’s move to Canada two generations ago, and the audio tutorials they used to learn English. “I can only imagine my grandparents repeating some of the bizarre phrases.” “Fountain, Growth” finds Khotin in collaboration with Montreal’s Tess Roby (Dawn to Dawn) for the project’s first-ever vocal track. Roby’s soft cadence echoes atop spiraling air pockets of rhythmic production, lending a breezy, almost shoegaze pop feel. Throughout the single and the album, wind gusts between the compositional layers, akin to the roaming spirits of its namesake, curving around the birdsong of “Life Mask” and seamlessly reaching “Unlimited <3.” The latter bumps in slow motion; disembodied whirrs from his Casio collide with 808 drums and sub-bass for a vibe that teeters on trap and instrumental hip-hop. Release Spirit rests in a dream sequence. Oscillating synth lines dance around the heartbeat of “Techno Creep,” a hyperactive REM state before the digitized ambient sprawl of “My Same Size.” In the final pass, Khotin imagines transcontinental travel from the glow of his screen. He recorded “Sound Gathering Trip” to soundtrack a genre of YouTube videos he’s taken to that follows train routes through Europe and Japan. The scene is serene and moving; piano keys warble as static-filled sound design shimmers off the rails, from cityscapes to the countryside, an introspective ride through a world beyond his bedroom. It doubles as an apt parting image for Khotin’s project as a whole: dreaming big but happiest when riffing on the details, shaping environments from the inside out. Over the last decade, he has stretched from his core in Edmonton, leaving a trace in Vancouver and beyond; but when all signs point home, he loops back to see it all from a different vantage, revitalized, refined, and free.

The two have built a creative relationship over the last 15 years, connecting through an ongoing exchange of music and ideas. ‘Answers’ sees this dialogue develop into a fully collaborative body of work both sonically and visually, rooted in the idea of looking back as a means to move forward.

Released in 2001, *Drawn From Life* is a rare ambient instrumental project by Brian Eno and J. Peter Schwalm.